The Role of Spiritual Knowledge in the Divine Plan

Self-Love

There are three monotheistic, Abrahamic religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Sikhism is also a monotheistic religion – Ek Onkar (‘God is one’) is their logo found on every single Sikh temple.

The oneness of God is the main theme of every religion which was founded by a Grand Messenger. The declarations of faith of Islam, Judaism and Christianity also point towards the oneness of God.

Somehow or others, followers of Judaism managed to believe some of their Messengers were either God or Sons of God; still they practised monotheism. In Christianity, the belief that Jesus is the Son of God is the main theme, although it is also known to be a monotheistic religion.

You will find more emphasis laid on the oneness of God in Islam in comparison to Judaism and Christianity, although Judaism and Christianity are monotheistic religions and it is verified by the Koran.

Yet, some of the followers from the era of Prophet Mohammad to date [revered] some of the saints of God like they were, in fact, God.

Even in Pakistan, it became common for followers of His Divine Eminence Lord Ra Riaz Gohar Shahi to say ‘HDE Gohar Shahi is my God.’ It wasn’t a documented belief system nor was it considered to be a legitimate belief by a majority of think tanks within Anjuman Sarfaroshan-e-Islam (an organisation comprising followers of His Divine Eminence in Pakistan). However, some people continued to believe the fact that HDE Gohar Shahi is God.

On one occasion, while HDE Gohar Shahi was addressing a gathering in Pakistan, somebody stood up from the public and said, ‘I wanted to ask a question.’ HDE smiled and said, ‘Go on.’ He asked, ‘Some people in your circle say that you are God.’ How HDE replied was strange. HDE repeated the man’s words and said, ‘Are you saying some people say that I am God? Have you heard other people say, “He is a Devil”?’ The man said, ‘No.’

Then HDE explained, ‘If people say I am God, it doesn’t mean this is what I believe for myself. I never said that I am God.’

If the Divine Law says that man can be God, then we can officially adopt this practice. Since there are different types of knowledge, even in Islam, you do not know what knowledge grants you what. I have gathered from the writings of many Sufis in different books that the minimum belief a disciple must have for his Spiritual Guide is that he must consider him to be God and he must treat him likewise; otherwise, attaining spiritual grace from him is like daydreaming. This was to be adopted as an attitude, but it has never been documented.

The religious law (Sharia) is very strict in a sense that it doesn’t recognise inward faculties (Batin). Sharia will see you only as a human being; it doesn’t have any access to make an analysis of your inward faculties. Sharia is blind of spirituality, therefore no matter who you are talking about, Sharia applies one stereotype rule to all. Ask any Sharia master about calling a man God and he will say, ‘This is Shirk (appointing a partner with God).’

Ask yourself, ‘Can man be God?’ And you will say, ‘It is not possible.’

This is because we have always preserved the notion that God is almighty: he can do anything, he will not die and he doesn’t fall ill. He doesn’t need help from anybody; he doesn’t sleep or even yawn. This concept of God has been drilled into our heads [by religious scholars]. We cannot just assume a man can be God.

What caused every monotheistic religion to have this problem that some of its followers managed to call a man God? Does it simply mean these individuals who developed the notion that man can be God went astray, had lack of knowledge or purposefully became prototypes of Satan?

In Islam, I have found that Sufis who were the great preachers of the oneness of God agreed to this notion that man can be God.

They were those who were delegated by God; they had spiritual authority, backing and support from God. Still they developed this notion among their followers that man can be known as God. This boggles the mind and the question arises: how come?

We find in the Koran that God will forgive any sins but Shirk. If having a notion of man becoming God was Shirk, then why should a person [who believed man can be God] have been a Saint of God bearing divine authority and spiritual power? He should have been a sinner and have received wrathful reaction from God. [Yet this is not what happened]. Nobody has the answer to this because nobody knows the truth.

How can somebody be a Saint of God and agree to the notion that man can be God, while the Koran states God will not forgive the sin of Shirk?

It is very obvious that the physique of man has no value, therefore it cannot be God. Forget being God; your physical body cannot even be a Momin (enlightened believer). You become a Momin only when your spiritual faculties become involved in enlightenment. Your souls have the ability to absorb God’s light, [so] God can come inside your souls.

Prophet Mohammad said: ‘ The heart of a believer is the abode of God.’

Your heart can be a divine abode which means God will live there. It is amazing how God works behind the scenes. Now, there is a banner that man cannot be God; behind the banner there is a knowledge according to which God will manifest through a human being. Such a person becomes like a cinema screen.

Young children think the characters on the cinema screen [are real and present in that moment]. In a similar way, when a man thoroughly cleanses his heart and it is wonderfully polished, it shines like a mirror. Then, God manifests himself in the mirror of the spiritual heart. Those who will look at that heart shall see God; they will point towards that heart and say, ‘He is God.’

You become a spiritual container of God, an outfit of God. For example, the t-shirt and pants I am wearing are not me. I am inside this outfit, but it is housing me. In a similar way, God will come inside your heart.

A human being has not become God, however the souls inside that human beings have absorbed the presence of God.

If this is Shirk, then how come God [enters people’s hearts]? This is the issue today.

Wahhabis have been using this pretext that Sufis are heretics because they call their Spiritual Guides as God.

Let me remind you of a Tradition of Prophet Mohammad in which he said, ‘One who has seen me, he has only seen God.’

So if a disciple believes his Spiritual Guide to be God, do not jump to conclusions and do not declare him to be a heretic; because he is not saying that the body of his Spiritual Guide is God. He is referring to the presence of God in his heart.

The Kaaba (the black cubicle in Mecca) has no value in comparison to Prophet Mohammad, however in order to model the teachings of Islam, Prophet Mohammad circumambulated it [as part of pilgrimage]. He was going around that black cubicle; at one point the Prophet Mohammad stopped and looked at the Kaaba and said, ‘O’ Kaaba, I am aware of your significance. However, the significance of a Momin’s heart is a thousand times greater than you.’

Mevlana Rumi said, ‘If you have gained control of your heart, this is equivalent of performing Hajj-e-Akbar (The Great Pilgrimage).’ Such a heart which is enlightened and has God’s light in it, is greater than one thousand Kaabas.

This is not about every heart, but a heart of an enlightened believer. The Kaaba was erected by a friend of God (Abraham) whereas the heart is the passage of God.

Wahhabis are not aware of this Islam because the only form of the religion they are aware of is the ritualistic form of Islam. If Islam is an orange, than Sharia is the skin of an orange. The orange inside is Batin (the esoteric aspect). If you are only eating the skin of an orange, it will taste bitter to you; based on this, you will say, ‘Oranges are bitter.’ Oranges are not bitter – you need to peel it and eat the orange which is inside.

Now Wahhabis will say the above-mentioned Prophetic Traditions do not have enough authenticity. We know that because everything which reveals the existence of Batin lacks authenticity in the eyes of a Wahhabi Muslim.

The Wahhabi ideology is like a plague. It is full of hatred and based on loot and plunder. Their ideology is based on fanaticism and something worse than extremism. To a Wahhabi, all non-Wahhabi Muslims are considered to be polytheists. Abdul Wahhab Najadi gave them the authority [to kill non-Wahhabis, confiscate their properties and take their women as slaves].

Wahhabis reject this saying. According to the Koran, you must have the light of God in your heart to be an enlightened believer. If the light of God doesn’t enter your heart, you are totally and explicitly misguided and misled in the eyes of God. Having light in the heart is a must to become a true devout believer. So how do they not consider Prophet Mohammad to be light? According to the Koran, God’s light is part of God. When it comes in you, partially, God comes into your heart.

God’s light is part of God and it is a must for every common follower to believe this.

‘They are devastated and destroyed, those whose hearts have become so hard that God’s name does not enter into them. And that is an explicit misguidance.’ [Koran 39:22]

Man cannot be God, but man can have God in him.

It is a must for connection with God for you to absorb God’s light in your heart and souls. If you do not manage to do it, neither do you know God nor does God know you. You only become familiar with God once you have God’s light in your heart; there is no familiarity without it. When you have it, you have some portion of God in you because God’s light belongs to God and is part of God.

Can you separate an enlightened believer from God? It is his light in your heart that turns you into an enlightened believer. A true believer cannot be separated from God, let alone those individuals who become a divine mirror in which the disciples observe the splendour of God.

God can manifest his beauty and compassion upon any human being; he is not bound by any law.

He must manifest his beauty. For example, when you dress up nicely, don’t you want people to look at you? In a similar way, God wants to show himself off; otherwise nobody will know who God is and how handsome he is. He does manifest his beauty on a shiny mirror: an enlightened heart. An enlightened heart becomes so transparent that whoever comes in front of it will reflect in it, whether it is Prophet Mohammad or God.

Sufism has been excluded from the mainstream religion of Islam by radical, intolerant and extremist Muslims of contemporary times. Sufism is yet another name for esoteric knowledge (spirituality) that deals in enlightenment, transformation and strengthening of your souls and auxiliary spirits.

It is such a folly for a human being to consider exclusion of spirituality from the religion, as human beings are compound creatures. Neither are we totally ethereal nor totally terrestrial; we are a combination of multiple sources.

In describing human beings, Moula Ali said, ‘O’ man, you perceive yourself to be very small but there in you is the entire universe. Your illness is within you and its remedy also is within you.’

There is everything in a human being. For example, stones, water, fire, wind, trees, leaves, animals, etc. Let’s jump to the angelic realm: we have angels in us and then greater, grand angels (Archangels). We have our own soul and then a potential capacity to accommodate God in us.

A perfect man is one who successfully manages to accommodate God inside him. Without God living in you, you are an incomplete human being.

You become a human being when God is included in you. This is a mighty statement. You are a perfect human being when God is an inhabitant inside you like yourself. This is spirituality.

Those who only focus and confine themselves to outward knowledge and the outward form of worship are practically rejecting the source of life; they are practically rejecting the real world.

The world that we are living in today is only for a brief sojourn. It is like a makeshift arrangement. Everybody knows about it, although they don’t care what it means. Where do we go after we die here and what is it that dies in us? Are we left with any other element of life after death, or do we become part of nothingness?

What dies in us is a deceptive form of life; this form of life did not exist before our entry into this world and it will not exist after our departure from this world. The eternal life belongs to your soul.

This is where people go wrong who try to understand His Divine Eminence Lord Ra Riaz Gohar Shahi and his teachings without the concept of spirituality. Spirituality is real knowledge; spirituality is what you really need, which is why HDE Gohar Shahi has laid an enormous amount of emphasis on acquiring spiritual expertise. This is the type of knowledge that will benefit you after your departure from this deceptive world.

There is another scenario quite common in this world today: people live a religious life as a Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Jew etc. They spend most of their time in the worship places. They do every good thing stated in the Bible, Koran and Torah, but when they actually die, their souls are dormant. Their souls are naïve to God and enlightenment. When they go back into the world of spirits, they are as blank as they were when they were sent into this world. Their purpose is lost.

In the end, individuals whose focus is on outward religiosity are going to be suffering. They will be in possession of nothing. They will not be treated either as a true follower of Moses, Jesus or Prophet Mohammad [by God].

Your purpose upon entry into this world is to enlighten your soul and give it the nourishment of God’s light. With the strength of God’s light, you are given to perform a spiritual journey to arrive at your destiny, which has been recorded in the book of your fate.

Since you are spending your time in mosques, churches, temples and synagogues without realising you are not doing enough to awaken your soul, [your time spent is] wasted. This is why His Divine Eminence Gohar Shahi has laid all the emphasis on enlightenment of the soul.

It is the soul which will enable you to know God. It is the soul which will enable you to have the divine understanding of love.

Without enlightenment of the soul, you are naïve to the most sacred and most ancient emotion of God: love. You cannot comprehend the manifestation of true love because your soul is dormant and you are not using the inner faculties of life.

This knowledge of spirituality was the base in every religion and the core of every religion. It began with the introduction of a new and the last Adam (Adam the Eminent One) from God.

Every time a Grand Messenger was sent by God into this world, he was equipped with both types of knowledge: outward and inner. Each Grand Messenger was very open to talk about the outward knowledge; however, there were some hurdles or perhaps some unspoken spiritual incapacity of the people he was sent into [due to which he didn’t boldly speak about spirituality].

In the first era of every Grand Messenger, most people did suffer from the disease of spiritual incapacity. They didn’t possess the power of comprehension of such obscure knowledge. This happened every time every Grand Messenger was sent. Some Grand Messengers spent all their time in trying to establish their religion. For example, when Moses went to Mount of Sinai to speak to God, upon his return, [people] reverted to their previous religion; they made a gold cow and [started worshipping] it again. So the Grand Messengers were kept busy; they didn’t have enough time to explain to their followers what spirituality was. Nevertheless, with the time they had — in whatever era they were appointed by God — they broke the ice. They took a couple of disciples in their confidence and told them about the spiritual knowledge.

When we talk about spirituality in Islam, it is known as Sufism and when we talk about spirituality in Judaism, it is called Kabbalah. Kabbalah and Sufism are the same. The difference that you will see will be intensity. Some missiles have a range of 5000 kilometres while some others have a range of 10 000 kilometres. Similarly, Kabbalah is the science of spirituality; however, the aspect of being able to see God is missing because that knowledge had not been revealed when Judaism was established. Later on, the knowledge of seeing God was revealed upon the heart of Prophet Mohammad.

The awareness of who you are is very important. If you have been accepted by God and have been awarded God’s love, then you will be granted a kind of special awareness. That awareness is not about God; that awareness will be about you: who you are.

When God is displeased and angry with you, he deprives you of self-awareness. What a darkness it is that you know everything but yourself!

Those who are granted awareness of themselves become very humble.

There is a self-humiliation process within yourself. When the mirror of your heart is polished well, then your ego reflects on it. It shows you constantly how ugly your ego is. You will be under the impression at all times that God is not happy with you.

Those who are misled and misguided are always under the blanket of this impression that they’re the best and very holy. If you think you are holy, then there is a problem with your mind and heart.

Along with educating the minds of children, [we] should also educate their hearts. When their hearts are educated, they will be better people on Earth. With a better mind, you become a better engineer or doctor. However, without the education of the heart, you’re evil like Hitler.

Awareness is very important, but there is no college out there where you learn awareness of yourself. This process starts within yourself the more your heart is enlightened, the more your self is mortified and the closer you get to God. You need to be so close to God [in such a way where] you can’t be closer to God anymore. Then he will give you the awareness of you.

Everyone, whether they practise a religion or they don’t, thinks they are the best. They believe that they know everything. They say such things because they don’t have awareness.

This is why I said long ago, ‘Self-exploration is divine exploration. Self-awareness is divine awareness.’ This is very important: the awareness of you to you.

What a pity it is that people can know who you are, but you do not know who you are!

Hadith-e-Qudsi (Sacred Tradition):

When God chooses somebody to be successful in their efforts in pleasing God, then God causes them to find flaws within themselves.

This means you know you are bad. If you know you are bad, God loves you. If God doesn’t love you, you will never know you are bad.

There are so many examples of people not wanting to admit that they are bad. This is because they lack God’s willingness. When God wants you to be successful in your efforts in pleasing God, then he causes you to be aware of yourself.

Messiah Foundation International has published a whole new magazine called the Messiah Herald catering for the spiritual needs of humanity! This publication is free both online and in print. A new issue will be released every month! Make sure to check out this month’s issue including the spotlight article: Is the Promised Messiah Already Here?

About the Author

Younus AlGohar is the Representative of the Awaited One Lord Ra Riaz Gohar Shahi and CEO of Messiah Foundation International. He has been recognised as an Ambassador of Peace and Man of Valour. He is an advocate of divine love and interfaith harmony.